Thunderdome is more than just a weekly flash fiction contest. However, we can’t tell you how much more, or in what way, because we’re all terrible writers because gently caress you, gently caress you, and especially gently caress you (the one in the back, almost didn't see you there) .

right that sounds good, how do i participate?

Step 1: Read the prompt post.
Step 2: Read the prompt post again.
Step 3: Make a signup post by the signup deadline in the prompt post.
Step 4: Write a story that fits the prompt and follows the specified guidelines (e.g., whatever the judge told you to do, you gently caress).
Step 5: Post your story by the submission deadline.

All story posts are final. No edits, no take-backsies. Once you’ve submitted, your rear end is riding the train full speed to Fistville. The judges MIGHT use lube, assuming you don’t try to sneak back in and edit your entry.

The winner of each week becomes the boss judge and chooses the next week’s prompt. They will also select two co-judges. Easy as two birds in the bush when in Rome. You’ll still find a way to gently caress it up, but that’s fine.

The judges will be there to shout at you, every step of the way.

The loser gets a free avatar!

Participants in the thread may also be challenged to participate in brawls, which are covered in detail in the second post.

Judging involves a lot of reading, writing, and being shouted at by impatient goons. Judges should be people who’ve participated in at least a few rounds of Thunderdome. Judges should NOT be people who literally disappear into the jungle when it’s their time to make the call. Judges should be prepared to offer some sort of critique for the week they judge.

Why would I even want to win, you’re asking yourself. Well. As the boss judge, you get to pretty much make the rules for a week. You are basically the Judge Dredd of one tiny bit of internet for 5-7 days of your life, which, for most of you, will be the single most impressive achievement you manage in your piddling, nugatory existences.

And finally,

quote:

Three shalt be the number of judges, and the number of judges shall be three.
Four shalt not judge, nor either shall those judging number two, excepting that thou then include a third.
Five is right out.

Please see the post below this one for information on judging brawls.

what if I want to really annoy the judges/everyone in the thread??

Good question! There are lots of ways to be annoying.

*Posting your story in quote tags. You evil heartless bastards love doing this for some unfathomable reason. It makes it harder for our nice friendly archivists to save your word diarrhea forever and ever.

*Prefacing your story with a big dumb apology or explanation. Your submission should contain a title, a word count, and a story. gently caress you.

*If you never have time to write critiques, consider NOT volunteering to judge. Critique is what keeps this perpetual poo poo train rolling.

*Unfunny shitposting. Funny shitposting is welcome, but are you so sure you’ve got what it takes?

*Fanfiction, unless otherwise specified, is still a reason to have your face slapped into ugly little pieces. WE ARE HUGE NERDS AND WE WILL KNOW FANFIC.

*Failure to submit means you are terrible. if you enter then fail to submit a story you should yourself on your next entry to stop your terribleness growing until it encircles the earth.

*If you goony fucks want to write your “Dear Penthouse” letters in your private time that’s fine, but so help me if your erotica makes its way into this thread I will find you and personally subject you to torments which will destroy all traces of your libido.

*Don’t be a big crybaby. Understand Kayfabe. Thunderdome is what it is because we can all come out, guns blazing, and lay down our best forums disses. Kayfabe means no one has to pull any punches in their critiques. That said, there’s a difference between showmanship and being an utter dick. Don’t be a dick, but actually since you’re going to gently caress it up and be a dick anyway: gently caress you in advance, you poo poo-brained neckbearded little Shaitans.

If you have anymore questions, consider popping into #Thunderdome on synIRC instead of blithering on in the thread.

Sitting Here fucked around with this message at Jan 4, 2016 around 21:36

brawling what so someone said something mean about your personal hygiene, sex-bits or maybe even your story and your bottom lip is doing that quivery thing and you feel like you can’t go a single second more without punching a motherfucker? thunderdome has just the thing. have a seat. don’t mind the lymph-spikes, they only hurt going in.

you can’t fight here it’s the Thunderdome when two people hate each other very much, and one of them is you, you get to slap down a challenge. make it big, make it brassy; you’re slapping your balls down on the bar, try and make ‘em bounce a little.

help someone's slapped me with something help accepting brawl challenges isn’t required, but if you’re the sort to sling the poo poo around (and that’s a fine sort to be) then failing to back up your bad words with good ones will be remembered. once you’ve thrown down a challenge, and had it accepted, a brawl judge will step up just like that weird bartender in The Shining. they’ll give you a prompt, a word count and a deadline. they’ll also, and this is real important, state the . this means if you fail to submit by the deadline then you get banned. the judge doesn’t need to give you an extension.

what do you mean banned brawl toxxes aren’t obligatory, but they are expected. if you’re actually a literal secret agent and you’ve just discovered you’re parachuting into Syria in two hours time then get on irc, snivel at your judge and maybe they’ll remove the toxx from the prompt, but expect that to be a one-time mercy if you gently caress it up.

anything else?

don’t challenge anyone until you’ve done a few rounds, good grudges take time to fester

don’t step up to judge a brawl unless you’ve at least got an HM or the participants have asked you to

declining a random drive-by brawl is more acceptable than one with a grudge behind it. this place runs on words, and hatred, and you gotta fuel the fire

If any of you disgusting turd samplers win a week or at least for some reason find yourself on the honorable mentions list, you can get a prize from my coffers: it includes games, books, audiobooks. The list keeps growing as I find stuff to add all the time.

If you win, contact me either with PMs or on IRC with what you want from my prize list.

Once upon a time, two Thunderdome veterans who shared a fondness for records, a fascination with statistics, and a touch of OCD conceived the greatest project ever imagined: the Thunderdome Archive, where everyone's literary shame could be displayed forever. crabrock bought a domain and used his mastery of code to make all his visions come true. Kaishai assisted him by trawling the threads for prompts, stories, and relevant .gifs. Together they still fight the crime that is data loss.

The Archive's purpose is to store the over three million words of creative effluvium written for TD to date. If you want to make use of it to the fullest degree (which includes reading the stories), you'll need an account, which you can request through the link at the top left of the page.

Note that accounts are open to participants only. If you're desperate to read about Vorpal Drones and vambraces at sea without having to search the threads, you must first shed blood.

The new year is almost upon us, Thunderdome. It's a time for beginnings and for resolutions, but also for reflections upon times and people long gone. What has become of those we used to know?

This week, your prompt is to write a story of acquaintances from long ago. As many as you please: a pair of former best friends would qualify, as would a group of former fellow soldiers. All of the acquaintances can appear on stage, or only one can while the rest remain in memory; perhaps some or all are dead; perhaps one turned into a hunky merman and left the other on land. Who knows. For whatever reason, these people have been estranged for years, but the bond they once shared must be important to the plot.

These acquaintances don't need to be from your own life. They're persons who knew each other once within the realm of the story. You can show them interacting or not as suits you; as long as their lapsed relationship influences the plot significantly, they don't have to meet again, but they certainly may.

No fanfiction, no nonfiction, no erotica, no poetry, and no GoogleDocs.

If any of you disgusting turd samplers win a week or at least for some reason find yourself on the honorable mentions list, you can get a prize from my coffers: it includes games, books, audiobooks. The list keeps growing as I find stuff to add all the time.

If you win, contact me either with PMs or on IRC with what you want from my prize list.

I told myself I was too busy this week, but I just can't pass up that prompt. Also, I'd hate to miss my chance to present a New Years offering to Her Royal Highness, the fair and honorable Blood Queen Kaishai. May her reign be mercifully short

In,

Thread newbies, a quick note on word counts. They are entirely optional and you should probably ignore them. More like guidelines, really. You'd do well to note that most of the winning entries from previous threads were 5000+ words long, so you should definitely base your approach on quantity. The judges will love you.

Also, Phobia: my (sort of belated) brawl entry is in the other thread.

The bass drives me mad. Thump, thump, thump thump thump. A constant rhythm that burrows into my skull, surrounds me from all sides and beats down on me. I roll over, back around, pull the pillow over my head.

Thump, Thump.

It drowns out my jazz music and I need my jazz music to relax. The rage bubbles up inside me with every passing beat. Keep calm, I think, they can’t be playing music all night long.

I fish a pair of earplugs out my nightstand and put them in. Still hearing it. Maybe it’s just an earworm.

I snap my fingers close to my ears, and despair.

I don’t want to go up there.

I want to sleep. It’s midnight, I have to get up in six hours. Hit the gym. Do my chores. I have to go to work.

It’s probably the new neighbor from above. I’ve seen him on the hallway. Pierced kid in ill-fitting clothes, looking like that kinda loser that’s into weed and satanism. Probably has an altar in his living room.

loving rear end in a top hat.

Relax. Think happy thoughts. I imagine myself confronting him. “It’s too loud,” I say. And he objects, tells me it’s not that bad and I say, “Well, it’s loud to me. I don’t care how loud you think it is.” And he has to accept that. He’s not allowed to keep me up at night.

The music stops. Or did it get quieter? I focus. Is the bass still there? No. Nothing. Thank loving--

Thump, thump, thump thump thump.

I get out of bed, throw on some clothes and leave the apartment. Dull music reverberates across the hallway, like someone had opened a disco across the street. I move up a floor.

My fist hovers over his door. There’s a built-in window, light flickering behind the curtain. I hesitate. Get nervous. You never know how people react.

I take a deep breath.

I knock. Blood pounds in my ears. Thump, thump, thump thump thump. Seconds pass and a human troll doll answers the door, stoned out of his mind. Beyond the dubstep in the background there’s a soft chanting: “Ooooooooohhhh eeeehhheeeeehhhhhh…”

“Whaaa…?” my neighbor says.

“Uhm, can you like… the music’s a bit loud.”

“Ohhh.”

“Can you turn it down?”

“I dunno man. It’s not that loud, is it?”

“Well, it’s loud to me.”

“Come on man.”

“Just… turn it down please. I really gotta sleep.”

His tired eyes pierce me for many beats. “Whatever,” he says. He closes the door.

My heart races. I wait, stand there uncertainly, until finally, the bass fades.

Back in my apartment the music’s gone. I lay in my bed with the biggest grin on my face.

I won.

It lasts twenty minutes.

The bass comes back with force, like it had taken a breather and now it’s ready to finish what it started.

gently caress!

My heart skips a beat. I slam my fists into the mattress.

He knows I’m hearing it. He loving knows. Why is he turning it back up? What’s wrong with him? How can he ignore that?

I don’t hesitate this time.

“You again,” he says. He seems on edge, jittery. His eyes dart around. The chanting is still there.

“Look, I don’t like this either,” I say.

“You can’t keep coming here.”

“Yeah, but the bass is really loud.”

“I dunno, maybe you’re just sensitive.”

I take a deep breath. “I’m here because I hope we can clear this up between each the two of us. But I don’t need to. You need to keep quiet at night. It’s the law.”

He bows past me, looks up and down the hallway.

“You calling the police?” he says.

“I don’t want to.”

“Hold on.”

He disappears inside. The music stops, and the chanting turns to a murmur. He comes back out.

“I’m Chris,” he says, and holds out his hand. I shake it.

He jerks his other arm up.

My legs are replaced with pain. I collapse on the floor. Chris stands over me, taser in hand.

The world goes black.

#

Thump, thump, thump thump thump.

Dubstep music bursts into my skull. I roll over, back again. My hands are tied.

I open my eyes to the gritty texture of a stone altar. I loving knew it.

There’s robed figures around me, chanting, “Droooooooooop the baaaaaaaaaaaass.” Their faces are hidden under hoods, covered by the flickering shadows of candlelights.

Chris steps forward, a smile playing over his lips. “You are not going to ruin this ritual,” he says. “We’ll--”

I roll off the altar and leg it. I dash through the cultists. A burly figure clotheslines me.

I’m pinned back to the altar.

Chris hmphs and someone hands him a bowl and a dagger. He comes closer.

Oh poo poo.

I can’t die like this. Not to loving dubstep cultists.

The edge of the dagger burns itself into my neck. It gets wet.

I live. Chris steps back and mixes the contents of the bowl, takes up an incense rod and tips it in. The mixture catches on fire. It fills the room with smoke, the smell of incense and grass and sulfur.

Thump. Thump. One per second. Thump. One per minute. Each hit comes more slowly, lasts longer, dragged out. I sense attack, decay, sustain, release of each beat. The single frequencies as they layer over one another to create noise. The twists and turns, highs and lows of each single frequency as they phase in and out, unfold along their sine waves.

The continuous signals turn concrete, series of beats within a beat, creaking like a broken subwoofer.

I don’t want his poo poo. This crap music. Why is this happening to me?

“Yes…” Vibes booms, “hate me. Despise me. Turn up the vibes.”

I can’t help it. I can only think about how all I wanted was to sleep, and get up, and get my dumb poo poo done, and now it’s two in the morning and my hard week’s work will be rewarded with these loving stoner cultists feeding me to some idiot bass deity.

“Wait,” Vibes says. “That’s enough. Enough hate.”

There’s a disturbance in the air. The cultists notice. They look at each other uneasily.

gently caress you. Look at these losers. Unemployed slackers, ruining my night, in my perfectly fine apartment that I worked for. Useless assholes worshipping a useless god. What the poo poo are you supposed to be. Dubstep god? Your dumb music will be irrelevant two years from now. It’s already a joke.

Vibes screams. It sounds like he dropped his mic. “No! Stop! Too much!”

Back in the day music was more than THUMP THUMP THUMP for five minutes. Hipster bashing his head against the keyboard. Do you get born with that kind of brain damage? Leave me out of this poo poo. Let me go home. gently caress you.

gently caress! YOU!

Vibes croaks, and my belly quivers. The bloated feeling makes way for a vacuum, sucking at my stomach.

Bass blasts out of my body. Any way it can. It fills the room with smoke and sound, blows out speakers and sends cultists to the ground holding their bleeding ears.

“Yeah! Screw you!” I yell. “And your loving music!”

I kick Chris as he spasms on the ground.

“And get a job!”

He wheezes and keels over. I don't know if he's dead. I kick him again.

#

It’s six in the morning. My apartment is silent. Just me, the birds and the thump thump thump of policemen walking above me. The noise and the stench and the bodies probably attracted some attention. Whatever. It’ll stop. And then I'll have peace.

My radio alarm jumps into action. Smooth jazz. I switch over to the metal channel.

And so Black Jesus turned water into a bucket of chicken. And He saw that it was good.

MERC-BRAWL 8: THE NU-UH IT AIN'T HAPPENIN'

You know what chafes my balls? Getting shot down. Not getting that job you were totes mcgotes qualified for. Getting the job you totes mcgotes wanted and then fired a week later for something completely out of your control. Four stalwart domers will write about rejection, but with a caveat. Someone gets kidnapped. Last week was fantastic and different so I will continue with tradition until it starts to suck. There will be two teams of two. Each team will write about one event while each person is writing from their perspective. I will judge based on order of posting, so keep that in mind.

Here is the prize list. As per usual, you have two weeks to write 2,500 words. January 14th 2359 is your deadline. If you sign up, you will be taking a

"You! Don't buy that lamp!" I nearly dropped the fishnet leg lamp as I recognized the man standing before me. It was… Me! I had lost weight, gotten beard, and from the smell it had been at least a month since my last bath.

"But. But dude, it's that lamp! And it's half price!"

"I know. Trust me, I know, but everything went wrong here. You meet the one at trivia night tonight. Her legs, her body, her personality. It's like she's your missing half. You spend the night baring your soul and exploring each other. In the morning she notices the lamp and it ruins everything! You fight over the lamp and she walks out. One month later she's on top of the world. She designed some amazing chair or something that sold in the millions. She's it, the ticket to the big time."

"But duuuude. It's great!"

Future me rolled his eyes. "Come on man, let it go. The lamp, or keeping the girl of your dreams, your job, not going to the pain of inventing time travel."

"We invented time travel?"

"Well, yeah I paid bums to be test subjects. After the first few tests they needed a lotta malt liquor to climb into the machine. Eventually I got it right. So you're not going to buy it right?"

I sighed and turned away. "Okay, but man it's such a good lamp!"

"We're making the right choice here, trust me. Now go get cleaned up for trivia night. You need to be at your best."

The man was stunningly well dressed. He had a smart looking jacket, and a really neat looking cape, the lining of which was shimmering and sparkling in more than Oriental splendour, which is a great deal of splendour indeed, just ask Kipling.

Just an FYI, I have given something resembling a crit to everyone who entered my Oh! Calamity! week. They are in the old thread.